Television: Bird's-Eye View

Eleven years ago Los Angeles' enterprising KTLA mounted a mobile TV
camera, began offering its viewers on-the-spot coverage of major news
events. Among them: atom bomb explosions on Yucca Flat, a Sante Fe
train wreck, an earthquake in California, the ordeal of little Kathy
Fiscus trapped in the bottom of a well. Last week KTLA announced
triumphantly that it had succeeded in building a TV camera into a
helicopter, the world's first commercial airborne unit.

The "telecopier" represented three years of planning and
experimentation. The 2,000-lb. weight of a standard camera and
transmitter would require a helicopter too bulky to be agile....